


A Palinode

by aves_y_cielo



Category: Historical RPF, Regeneration - Pat Barker
Genre: M/M, Neurasthenia, Poetry, Regeneration, World War I, shell-shock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-14
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-21 03:40:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aves_y_cielo/pseuds/aves_y_cielo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was not ideal; Wilfred knows that. But few things were in 1917.</p><p>
  <i>'But if the sovereign sun I might behold<br/>With condescension coming down benign,<br/>And blessing all the field and air with gold,<br/>Then the contentment of the world was mine.'</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have nothing to say about this one. Just that I don't find it particularly hard to get distracted from A Levels/Oxford applications/the general to-do list in order to spout rubbish about these two amazing guys who _just won't get out of my head._

The first time Wilfred reads one of Sassoon’s poems is while sipping a cup of tea on the Hindenburg line. The paper is dim with lack of quality and his ears near deafened by the shrieks of shells, but the words still manage to gleam through the faded newspaper, blinding Wilfred’s irises with their power. Never before has he read such intense poetry. After finishing the last line, he finds himself re-reading one particular verse again and again, slowly mesmerizing each expression. But to the end, unjudging, he’ll endure / Horror and pain, not uncontent to die / That Lancaster on Lune may stand secure...  
“Lieutenant Owen, sir?”  
“Yes?”  
“Officer Stanhope wants you, sir. Down in your dugout.”  
“Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.”  
The chipped cup quivers in his already shaking hand as he brings it to his lips amid the noise and bustle of the trench. Wilfred knows these are no conditions for a poet to exist in, let alone thrive and command the world through words like he sometimes feels his heart ache to. Although, judging by this small section of the Daily Mail, Siegfried Sassoon seems already to have succeeded.

~ ~ ~ 

That same evening Wilfred sits down, as is common for him, to write to his mother. His gaze falls yet again upon the Daily Mail at the opposite end of the table.  


‘Mother,’ he begins, ‘After reading these pieces I feel a high sense of emotion. I believe this man has begun to explain the unexplainable. Shakespeare reads vapid after these. Not of course because Sassoon is the greater artist, but the content – this is what it is all about, dear Mother. What it has always been about; what I, with my small efforts and voice, have as of yet failed to convey…’  


So much she does not know; and so much she simply would not be able to understand. Wilfred breathes out slowly, drawing a careful line through the paragraph. How it felt not to have washed his face, nor taken off his boots, nor slept a deep sleep for twelve days in an icy November. How it felt to be an officer, a shepherd of sheep that did not know your voice and who were impossible to protect. How it felt to be buried in a shell hole for three days opposite a limbless man you know…or at least, he thinks with a shudder, you used to know.  


Just thinking that last thought turns his whole body numb. The memories stab at him like tiny, spiteful daggers, and Wilfred feels the claustrophobic sensation that has become so familiar as of late rise in his chest, halting his breathing and breaking his concentration.  


The panic. It is always there, whether he is staring at the dugout ceiling under his blanket at night or crawling forwards across No Man’s Land in the heat of battle. It never leaves. 

And the panic is growing.  


Wilfred places his head in his hands and wonders, not for the first time that day, when his breaking point will come.


	2. Chapter 2

He does not have long to wait.

One week later Wilfred jerks awake, his face pressed hard and uncomfortably against something wet and sliding. For a second he thinks it to be blood, and, unfazed, automatically fumbles for his handkerchief to rub what he can of it away, but when his eyes eventually focus he realizes he was not in fact sleeping against a corpse, but the humid window of a train.  
He blinks several times. The remembrance is less like relief, and more like - shame. As if he knows this is what he’s been waiting for, and it is somehow his fault that he didn’t prevent it from coming. Well. The carriage is dimly lit, whether by lack of natural light or artificial he cannot tell, and around him are numerous other khaki-clad individuals, their eyes looking haunted despite the obvious safety of the juddering train carriage. Wilfred realizes how absurd it is that he still notices the eyes, every time…but how can he not? I suppose picking a compatriot’s iris out of the mud has that effect on you, he thinks distantly.

Wilfred’s mind journeys away from the jolts and into a dark, disturbing sleep.

~ ~ ~

Eight hours later, Wilfred steps out of a hackney, onto a flight of greying stone steps and into a fine sheet of rain. From under his worn-out military cap the grim shadow of the Hydropathic looms up at him out of the Edinburgh fog. This, this is oppression is its literal form, he thinks blandly. They may as well bury us alive than shroud us from view like this. And maybe Wilfred would prefer that, too.

He pushes these morbid thoughts from his mind as he mounts the steps. Minutes later, he is sat across a table from a stocky, serious-faced RAMC officer, his every move being scrutinized by beady eyes.  
“Mister Owen, is it?”  
“Y-y-yes, sir.”  
“I like to maintain an informal atmosphere with my patients, so we won’t bother about the sir for now. “  
Unsure of how to break the subsequent silence, Wilfred finds his gaze drawn to a large oil painting mounted on the wall just above Brock’s desk. The doctor notices his gaze and nods approvingly.  
“I-I’ve seen it before somewhere. I-in a c-church….at Dunsden, in S-Shrewsbury.”  
“I daresay it’s one of the most renowned Greek myths. The giant son of the sea god Poseidon. You are familiar with the legend?”  
“S-sadly n-not.”  
“The Greeks of the sixth century BC located Antaeus in the desert of Libya. It was said he would challenge all passers-by to wrestling matches, kill them, and collect their skulls. He was indefatigably strong, although only so long as he remained in contact with the ground; his Mother Earth. Once lifted into the air, however, he became just as weak as other men.”  
Owen, unsure of where Brock is going with this, concentrates upon the painting’s figures. Antaeus, suspended in the air by Heracles, has his mouth wide open, bellowing in anguish as the strength he once possessed fades away into nothingness. A quaint artwork for an office in a mental hospital.  
“Antaeus had defeated most of his opponents until he encountered Heracles, who discovered the secret of his power and consequently crushed him in a bearhug while holding him aloft. I’ve heard it’s a favourite subject in ancient and Renaissance sculpture.”  
Owen laughs dryly. “C-can’t understand w-why.”  
Brock tilts his head and surveys the younger man over the top of his spectacles. “The story’s often been used as a symbol of the spiritual strength with accrues when one rests one’s faith on the immediate fact of things. A concept relevant to many of you here at the hospital. What possesses more power: faith in the thought, or faith in real life?”  
A silence falls in which Wilfred can just about hear the audible creak of the window’s aging glass against the wind. He knows there’s nothing physically wrong with him; in a sense, that’s the very worst part. But Brock doesn’t seem to be expecting a denial from the new arrival, so he decides to voice his other point:  
“T-the immediate fact of things isn’t q-quite as easy to dwell upon as one would w-want.”  
“That’s why Antaeus’ legend holds so much relevance to my practice. Choosing to live in the here and now, or live in the past. The real question is, of course, whether you are indeed willing to live it at all.”  
Wilfred peers down at his dusty shoes resting beneath the table and does not answer.


End file.
